There really is no business like showbusiness – at least when it comes to London's track record for blockbuster theatre. Everything about it is appealing – at least if you're an international producer. For while the ring of West End cash registers has been celebrated year on record-breaking year by the industry's annual box office reports, it is the export market in British drama that has recently caught the eye of the financial press.

Major British productions no longer just travel back and forth across the Atlantic; they're franchised across the planet. Anyone with a copy of No Logo somewhere on their shelves might huff at this globalisation of theatre. Disney arguably kickstarted the trend for shipping out assembly-line monster musicals – from Broadway and London to Beijing and Rio de Janeiro – in the late 90s with Beauty and the Beast. The Lion King has been sold to audiences in almost 20 different cities dotted across the globe in the last 13 years, to estimated ticket sales of $2bn.

With British productions though, you'd expect Australia, Canada, and probably parts of Europe to be considered as destinations for West End shows, welcoming the same songs and the same identikit design to their local playhouses. But China? Russia? Israel? No doubt British theatremakers could boast that our successful one-way cultural exchange comes down to the quality of homegrown product. But am I the only one who feels a bit queasy about theatre nakedly pitched as exactly that: product? A commodity rather than culture, stock to invest in financially for profit rather than emotionally for the experience?

Theatre snobs will sniff that, as the majority of these international transfers are commercial musicals, it makes little difference to the artistic soul of a show whether it's staged in the Palladium in central London or an auditorium in Manila. But theatre snobs are bores. And I don't think it's so straight-cut. Should we really be clapping the ubiquity of a homogenised theatre culture across the planet, where your musical adventure, from Seoul to São Paulo, can take on the same uniformity as your cup of Starbucks coffee?